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Republicans Named to Deficit Panel

By Jackie Calmes March 12, 2010 4:40 pmMarch 12, 2010 4:40 pm

Congress’s Republican leaders on Friday named six lawmakers to the bipartisan debt-reduction commission that President Obama created, and the anti-tax hardliners among them suggest that there are high hurdles to forging agreement by December on proposals to arrest the unsustainable growth of projected deficits.

But in their joint statement announcing their respective picks, neither Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Senate minority leader, nor his House counterpart, Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio, explicitly made opposition to tax increases a precondition of their party’s participation in the commission’s work, as some Republican activists had urged.

Still, skepticism is high that Republicans would agree to raise revenues, or Democrats to slash spending, in an election year with control of Congress in the balance. Many economists and business leaders, however, say a mix of tax increases and reductions in the fast-growing entitlement benefit programs — Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—is essential, as soon as the economy fully recovers, to avert a fiscal calamity in the coming decade.

While the commission will have 10 Democrats and eight Republicans, the president’s requirement that 14 of the 18 members agree to any recommendations in effect gives the minority a veto.
Mr. McConnell’s three choices for the commission are Senators Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, Michael D. Crapo of Idaho and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Mr. Gregg is the senior Republican on the Senate Budget Committee, while Mr. Crapo is a member of the committee who is close to Mr. McConnell. Mr. Coburn’s well-publicized attacks on federal spending have antagonized colleagues in both parties.

Mr. Boehner’s picks are Representatives Dave Camp of Michigan and Paul D. Ryan of Wisconsin, the senior Republicans, respectively, on the House Ways and Means Committee and the House Budget Committee, and Representative Jeb Hensarling of Texas, an outspoken leader among House conservatives.

Mr. Hensarling recently had a televised dispute over budget policies with Mr. Obama when the president spoke at a House Republican retreat, with the president chastising “Jim” for mischaracterizing the administration’s budget to score political points. Mr. Ryan has been assailed by Democrats this week for his debt-reduction plan that would privatize Medicare and Social Security.

The panel still lacks three Democrats to be named by the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, who has been preoccupied by the effort to pass health care legislation.

“We’d like to get started,” said Alice Rivlin, a former director of the Congressional and White House budget offices and one of Mr. Obama’s appointees. “Time’s a wastin’.”

The Senate majority leader, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, tapped three Democratic senators, and Mr. Obama has named six members who are not elected officials, including two Republicans—the commission co-chairman, former Senator Alan K. Simpson of Wyoming, and David M. Cote, the head of Honeywell International.

Mr. Gregg was the sponsor of a bipartisan bill to create a similar panel by law, but it was defeated when Mr. McConnell and other Republicans who had been cosponsors nonetheless voted against it, straining Mr. Gregg’s relations with the Republican leader. Mr. Obama then established his panel by executive order.

“Although I have reservations about the viability of this effort, the President’s National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is the only game in town,” Mr. Gregg said, in a statement that otherwise assailed Democrats for higher spending.

While Republicans have slammed Democrats for the roughly $1 trillion in stimulus spending and tax cuts since Mr. Obama took office, numerous non-partisan studies have attributed much of the nation’s current debt to the policies of the past decade when Republicans controlled the White House and Congress, including tax cuts and spending on wars and a new Medicare prescription drug benefit, as well as to revenues lost because of the recession.

“I don’t think we need to raise taxes,” Mr. Camp said in an interview. “I think we have a very serious problem in that we cannot sustain the level of spending and the level of taxation to continue on the path we’re on. So very tough decisions have to be made.”

He added, “If Greece wasn’t the wake-up bell, I don’t know what could be.”

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